Kevin Munoz’s type-led Flying Lotus limited edition screenprint is a super nice piece of design. Printed using metalic ink on black paper, it is in the Cali native’s own words, “super nerdy and way blingy.” Coming in at a mere $20 it’s as kind on your wallet as it would be to your wall.

Munoz has worked for the likes of Paul Frank and Converse and counts joker Jack Black as a fan of his Juan t-shirt. Check his artwork which has that relaxed, idiosyncratic vibe that is peculiar to Californian visual culture. His blog and bio also raise a smile.

Really enjoyed exploring the Project Thirty-Three blog produced by Jive Time Records, a Seattle-based store specializing in used vinyl.

Project Thirty-Three is an archive of vintage album covers that share the fact that they convey their message with simple shapes (circle, rectangles, squares and triangles), bold typography and concise copy. A site that showcases a genuine love for music and a treasure trove of inspiration. Well worth a look.

Free Akai MPC 2000 wallpaper from Markus Designs. Interior digital design for beat heads (comes ready made for made Smart phone, iPad etc etc.

Woahhhh have Lex really been delivering the goods for 10 years?! Apparently so, and to mark this momentous occasion for a UK record label that has few contemporary peers – few other labels have consistently dropped new markers in the field that is designated ‘left of field’ in the world of hip-hop –  are releasing 10. 10 is an compilation of 10 exclusive tracks by the likes of Jneiro Jarel, DOOM, Thom York, Neon Neon, Boom Bip, Dosone and Fog. Tracks are currently being released in digital sizzle format on a weekly basis, before they are compiled into a must have picture disc released in January 2012.

Also worth visiting to pick up a last minute Christmas present or two is the new Lex Store. The store is a great place to spend five minutes digging through. One of the main reasons is it gives you the chance to peruse a lot of the design work crafted by Ehquestionmark? which has the rare effect of making you want to buy the vinyl even if you haven’t heard the music – how nice is that cover for Boom Bip’s Zig Zaj LP? Also lurking is a great limited edition pack that features two screen-prints by illustrator Yu Sato, one commemorating DOOM & Ghostface Killah’s show at The Roundhouse, London, and Lex Records 10th Anniversary poster.

BLU – DOINNOTHIN’ FT. UGOD (PRODUCED BY FLYING LOTUS) from david m. helman on Vimeo.

Blu’s Doinnothin‘ is already a hypnotic beast of a track but David M. Helman and RUFFMERCY, with their graphic freshness (think Blue Note for the beat generation), have only gone and made the track even more of a cranium wrecker. Like a nekkid Alexa Chung rocking just a pair of Nike Vandals, this is some freaky sheeet!

Ben Drury, legendary go-to man for anyone wanting street influenced graphic design that drips with innovation and freshness, has broken cover from his esoteric and sometime plain unfathomable The Silent Listener (or the Violent Whistler as it is now called) website and launched a more commercially minded space to showcase his far reaching and influential talents.

The new site show’s off everything from his record covers, promo direction and love of handcrafted typography. An inspiring insight into the work of a man best summed up as a ‘designers designer’.

Successful club nights often result in aspirations for bigger and better things. Many try, few succeed. One notable success story is Glasgow-based label LuckyMe, whose evolution from club night to label to artist collective has been glowingly acknowledged as representing ‘the true spirit of independent thinking’, and has been selected for the prestigious Beck’s Green Box Project. Becks recently commissioned 30 artists to create their own orginal piece of artwork for the project in cities across the world including London, Manchester, New York, LA, Milan and more. The project kicked off on the 4th July with Arne Quinze’s impressive 200 foot digital structure placed on top of the torch of the Statue of Liberty. The Beck’s Art Fund is now open to submissions. Go to Becks.com to submit your idea’

We caught up with Dominic Flannigan, artist producer and one of the LuckyMe co-founders to find out about the collective’s humble beginnings, Glasgow’s music scene and the design concept behind his Green Box submission.

You can find out more about fellow Glaswegian bass heads, and LuckyMe affiliates, the Numbers label, in the latest issue of Bonafide.

What’s your Green Box design looking like? Can you explain the concept behind it?

It’s looking good. Our logo is my ex girlfriends eye and we’ve used it and adapted it as a label on all our 12″ records. For the augmented reality work we’ve cast these labels in 3D onto large spheres of plastic and marble and glass, each representative of the music on the release. We’ve given them character too, with a varied sense of movement. As you walk around the Green Box on the street it changes to the next eye and next music from the release plays on your headphones. It’s a music player with personality.

Going back to the beginning, how did the art side of things become integrated after the success of the club night?

Well in the beginning our night was tiny. 75 people only, for years even. It was the most indulgent night on Earth putting on everything from all our Montreal signings to The Brainfeeder guys, to Warp artists and grime. It was great but the events side of the label has never been our priority. LuckyMe is known today for the sound that Hudson Mohawke, Rustie and Mike Slott are carving for hip-hop and modern dance music, we’re a record label first. The art side is born of us relating our friends from art school to our music and trying to use our family and friends to put out music with it’s own identity. With myself a designer as well as a musician it was always there.

How did Montreal natives Jacques Greene and Lunice become part of your label?

They toured over here early under different names and making different music. We were, from a very early date, on the same page. We were swapping Myspace love in 2007 / 2008. It was just a really exciting time and we were all the young guys using that technology to make collaborations and travel and tour. I think we relate to each other also cause neither Glasgow or Montreal were both the best kept secrets as far as cities of band and music culture. They both have a great local scene of various music but they have the absence of real music industry people. This means that different music can grow and cross pollinate there without people being snapped up by managers and middle men. We stay independent and exciting for longer in these sorta’ places.

How did your label find its niche releasing bassy house records?

Ha. We heard our guys making really great house music and asked to put them out. We’re the product of our tastes. We don’t A&R anything, we get our guys to give us large demos and pick our favourites. We don’t have to tell people to make changes to their music. We just sign great guys and then release what they do.

What is your process for designing record sleeves, does it start with the music or an idea?

It always starts with the music. 100% our design has been in direct response to the music. We are pretty high concept with our sleeves. 
They are either provocative of the atmosphere of the music or a direct visual metaphor to the title but we really go to town setting up photography for our sleeves. Whole weeks lost to get something right. I’m pretty synesthesiatic and I can’t stand it if the design associated to a piece of music is wrong. I can’t listen to something once it’s been cast wrong with a shit video or cover.

How important do you see the clothing side of your business? Is it just a natural evolution for you?

My partner at the label Martyn Flyn basically schooled me on streetwear in my early teens. He’s a dapper guy. It accidentally became a huge part of my life. I worked in fashion design for a couple of years after leaving arts school. It was a natural evolution for us. All we ever wanted to do with our label was make the products we were emphatic about.

How do you plan to expand LuckyMe in the future?

I can see the label growing, expanding. Not just cause  the couple of us running the business are really ambitious but cause our friends keep making better music. The arts projects are also so important to us, and it’s a pipe dream now to start moving into publishing or maybe find a physical space for our label. A gallery space that serves all the purposes we’d need – live shows, bar, salt beef bagels, coffee, fine books.

In your bio you describe Glasgow as being ‘one of the coolest, most innovative scenes for live music and fashion in the world’. Has it always been this way? Have things been changing at all recently?

As far as I know it’s always been this good. Maybe even better. I can’t even imagine what the first Optimo parties were like. We are the product of being into the Neptunes and backpack hip-hop, and going to see guys playing techno and electro. Or going to a bar on a Wednesday night and there is a beautiful girl singing on a stage with a synth, playing a roll of sellotape as percussion (true story). It’s a weird town. I don’t know how it got so brave. I got nothing to say it won’t keep producing amazing music. I think the scene is still very healthy cause for the most part people don’t know how cool they actually are.

Lev Harris

Lucky Me (UK) from Beck's Green Box Project on Vimeo.

Rinse Presents: A Visual Retrospective – The Work Of Shaun Bloodworth & Give Up Art celebrates the visual identity of the seminal London-based radio station and label, Rinse.

In many ways the exhibition is a documentation of the growth of the label and its modus operandi to positively promote and encourage underground music. Like other influential labels such as Factory, Mo’Wax, Lex, Ninja Tune and Big Dada, Rinse has also sought to cultivate a visual style that embodies what the music is all about. For Saville, Drury, Ehquestionmark! and Oscar and Ewan (check out back issues of Bonafide magazine for features on these design heroes) read London design agency Give Up Art and photographer Shaun Bloodworth. Give Up Art and Bloodworth have built a long standing relationship with the label to develop an aesthetic that screams Rinse.

The exhibition will be at the Truman Brewery Gallery, 12-22 August 2011.

In what now seems to be a staple event at the annual Notting Hill Carnival, Red Bull have once again joined forces with Major Lazer for the Carnival Party that takes place, as ever, under the westway on Monday 29th August. Diplo and Switch will once again bring a host of guests a collaborators along for the party, with surprise appearances in previous years from the likes of MIA, Santigold and Lee Scratch Perry.

The line up so far is: Major Lazer, Black Chiney, Dillon Francis b2b Brodinski, Oneman b2b Jackmaster, Lunice, Kito plus very special guests.

As if this isn’t enough, the party will also feature art showcases by Mutoid Waste Company and music video director Ferry Gouw, as well as live t-shirt printing by Hit and Run.

Tickets for this unmissable event are free upon sign-up as of 10am this morning exclusively at www.redbull.co.uk/carnival

Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album
Thames and Hudson

The beauty of Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album is that this well conceived publication not only comprehensively documents one most influential record labels to come out of UK, it also doubles up as a valuable resource for creatives too.

The book has been designed so that it captures the spirit and ambition of this seminal record label. Through a desire to create a holistic aesthetic for Factory, under which the music, visual identity and the physical experience (via the Hacienda) would complement each other, the label became, like Blue Note and 4AD, renowned for much more than a company merely releasing records. Factory became a (high) watermark for sophisticated modern musical culture.

This book demonstrates how this came about, highlighting how the collective grew the label’s – and there is no better word for it – brand through a disciplined creative approach to graphic design. Through creating a visual language that was both intellectual and playful in terms of its appropriation and influences, experimental, and, through consistent ouput, distinctive, Factory found themselves in the enviable position where you could recognise their product without having to read the label.

Factory’s ‘branding’ is best highlighted through their early releases and the attention to detail that saw it establish a set of design tools (sic. brand guidelines) , such as referencing each item produced with a unique code, adopting symbols etc, that were used on each release. The resulting clean, crisp design for packaging, posters and even stationary were rigourously stamped with the Factory brand. Later, as the book documents, the Factory inspired visuals become less dominant and different designers brought new approaches and techniques into the mix. But the paradigm for design remained the same – all the artwork had to embrace the innovative vision of the label and its roster of musical talent.

The second reason why this book is a must is the way it excites the reader about graphic design. The way it highlights and explains the basis of the design concepts for album covers and illustrates the strong body of work that makes up the Factory design archives, makes it a valuable resource rather than just another collectable publication. Like a toolbox, it offers invaluable insights into the approaches and production techiques used, such as referencing which designers influenced Peter Saville and co., the typography they selected and their magpie and carefree attitude to appropriation and juxposition. To prospective and established designers this is inspiring and useful material.